Check it:

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such “commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. . .

Um, NO. What is it about the Constitution that these clowns hate so much?

Hackers clone RFID passports.

The New York Times is running this photo comparison on its front page today:

On a related note, Slactivist had this to say.

By now we assume everyone knew that Tony “Kitchen Confidential” Bourdain was among those trapped in Beirut when Israel started bombing. He got out, and Salon ran his account last week. It’s worth reading.

A decade ago, the GOP pushed through the War Crimes Act of 1996.

That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

It seems that the current, torture-lovin’, waterboardin’, enemy-combatant-designatin’ GOP has just recently remembered this law, and as a consequence Attorney General Gonzales has been stumping with Republicans in Congress about creating some sort of loophole for those in power now, since it seems likely that we’ve been gleefully violating the Geneva Conventions for years now. It was Gonzales himself who called them “quaint,” you’ll recall.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said. A spokeswoman for Gonzales, Tasia Scolinos, declined to comment on Gonzales’s remarks.

The Justice Department’s top legal adviser, Steven G. Bradbury, separately testified two weeks ago that Congress must give new “definition and certainty” to captors’ risk of prosecution for coercive interrogations that fall short of outright torture.

Language in the administration’s draft, which Bradbury helped prepare in concert with civilian officials at the Defense Department, seeks to protect U.S. personnel by ruling out detainee lawsuits to enforce Geneva protections and by incorporating language making U.S. enforcement of the War Crimes Act subject to U.S. — not foreign — understandings of what the Conventions require.

The aim, Justice Department lawyers say, is also to take advantage of U.S. legal precedents that limit sanctions to conduct that “shocks the conscience.” This phrase allows some consideration by courts of the context in which abusive treatment occurs, such as an urgent need for information, the lawyers say — even though the Geneva prohibitions are absolute.

The Supreme Court, in contrast, has repeatedly said that foreign interpretations of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions should at least be considered by U.S. courts.

Some human rights groups and independent experts say they oppose undermining the reach of the War Crimes Act, arguing that it deters government misconduct. They say any step back from the Geneva Conventions could provoke mistreatment of captured U.S. military personnel. They also contend that Bush administration anxieties about prosecutions are overblown and should not be used to gain congressional approval for rough interrogations.

“The military has lived with” the Geneva Conventions provisions “for 50 years and applied them to every conflict, even against irregular forces. Why are we suddenly afraid now about the vagueness of its terms?” asked Tom Malinowski, director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

It sounds an awful lot like Alberto wants to make “just following orders” a defense. We’re pretty sure that’s a bad idea. That dog didn’t hunt 60 years ago, and it shouldn’t now.

So, a judge in Chicago dismissed the lawsuit alleging the telco had given improper access to phone records to the Feds, on the nebulous grounds of “state secrets.” Right. Majikthise summarizes:

Here we see a two-pronged attack on the separation of powers. The president claims that he is not bound to respect the laws passed by Congress (i.e., FISA), and furthermore he is the final authority on what court cases might jeopardize national security. The president’s decision is not subject to appeal. He is not accountable to Congress or to the public for his determinations. He doesn’t have to give reasons for his decisions.

The bottom line is that the president can block any court case he wants by claiming that the case might reveal state secrets. That was a nice way to shut down the Illinois citizens who wanted to sue to stop AT&T from giving their private records to the government, or anyone who might want to use the courts to challenge Bush’s authority.

Anybody else see the problem here?

(N.B. that this isn’t the EFF lawsuit, which is proceeding.)

An awful lot. Here Mr Colbert has a bit of sport with the mainstream media; as a bonus, he gives a brief rundown of the sorts of questions he’s asked versus those asked by the morning “news” shows. Enjoy.

America’s lawyers think Bush’s signing statements are bullshit and an end-run around separation of powers, to which this President is clearly hostile.

WASHINGTON, July 23 — The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed.

In a comprehensive report, a bipartisan 11-member panel of the bar association said Mr. Bush had used such “signing statements” far more than his predecessors, raising constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws on the ground that they infringed on his prerogatives.

These broad assertions of presidential power amount to a “line-item veto” and improperly deprive Congress of the opportunity to override the veto, the panel said.

In signing a statutory ban on torture and other national security laws, Mr. Bush reserved the right to disregard them.

The bar association panel said the use of signing statements in this way was “contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers.” From the dawn of the Republic, it said, presidents have generally understood that, in the words of George Washington, a president “must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.”

If the president deems a bill unconstitutional, he can veto it, the panel said, but “signing statements should not be a substitute for a presidential veto.”

“Putting innocent people on the list to make your quota.”

The Times has a story today covering the newest schism in Baptism: the struggle for control of the affiliated colleges. The fundies in the SBC and state conventions would love to turn them all into indoctrination-focused campuses, but the educators think differently.

GEORGETOWN, Ky. — The request seemed simple enough to the Rev. Hershael W. York, then the president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention. He asked Georgetown College, a small Baptist liberal arts institution here, to consider hiring for its religion department someone who would teach a literal interpretation of the Bible.

But to William H. Crouch Jr., the president of Georgetown, it was among the last straws in a struggle that had involved issues like who could be on the board of trustees and whether the college encouraged enough freedom of inquiry to qualify for a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Dr. Crouch and his trustees decided it was time to end the college’s 63-year affiliation with the religious denomination. “From my point of view, it was about academic freedom,” Dr. Crouch said. “I sat for 25 years and watched my denomination become much more narrow and, in terms of education, much more interested in indoctrination.”

Georgetown [College, in Kentucky] is among a half-dozen colleges and universities whose ties with state Baptist conventions have been severed in the last four years, part of a broad realignment in which more than a dozen Southern Baptist universities, including Wake Forest and Furman, have ended affiliations over the last two decades. Georgetown’s parting was ultimately amicable. But many have been tense, even bitter.

Local copy here, since NYT is terrible about aging links.

Quotes like this will do it:

And what kind of expression is that? It’s the face you make when somebody asks you what the square root of 12,526 is, shows you a picture of your mom having sex with the mailman, and then gives you a bag full of puppies and kittens.

By the way, what exactly is Barton famous for?

Some of Bush’s lackeys in Congress are trying to do an end run around the FISA laws in order to make sure that the currently illegal domestic spying program becomes legal, and does so retroactively to prevent any embarrassing trials for the felonies being committed daily by the Administration.

The [current] bill also removes the current language language that clearly states that any eavesdropping conducted outside of FISA is illegal.

In its place?

This line: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit the constitutional authority of the President to collect intelligence with respect to foreign powers and agents of foreign powers.”

Lovely.

Boing Boing: No More Giant Catfish Fishing. Yes, apparently the pic is legitimate.

Sadly, these appear to live only in Southeast Asia. On the plus side, we’re pretty sure hand-grabbing these sumbitches is impossible.

First, the DoJ is drafting legislation to mandate that eavesdropping back-doors be included in all networking hardware in order to make sure they can wiretap whenever they want. This is a terrible idea, prone to all sorts of evil, and needs to get strangled in its crib.

Second, the military is paying a law school to find ways around the Freedom of Information Act. This is yet another terrible idea; governmental transparency is paramount in a free society.

A Denver paper ran an editorial calling for the legalization of marijuana, so lying douchebag and DEA administrator Karen Tandy felt the need to respond. With lies. Drug War Rant has the summary.

Subway rider attacked with power saws.

Lieberman has declared he’ll run as an indy in the fall if he loses his primary battle against Ned Lamont.

Not that this is news.

As it turns out, the NSA has been sifting call records since before 9/11. Lovely.

From one of their own anchors, no less:

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: [T]he Japanese did learn that we broke their code, and so they started using a new code.

BRIAN KILMEADE: And guess what? What would you rather have? The Japanese knowing that we broke their code or a decision saying that journalists are allowed to write anything they can or want to write because they think the public needs to know. See, I’m more into the ends justifying the means. And what they do is you can sunset this, Judge. The same way they have the Patriot Act sunsetted. You put up the Office of Censorship. You get a consensus to journalists to analyze and then you realize what FDR realized early. Winning is everything. Freedom is — you don’t have any freedom if the Nazis are the victors. You have no one to trade with if Western Europe falls. That’s the reality. You’re in love with the law, but I’m in love with survival.

NAPOLITANO: I’m in love with your freedom, and I want you and me all the people we work with —

KILMEADE: You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have it both ways.

NAPOLITANO: Of course, we can. We have it both ways now. We can say whatever we want and the government can’t censor us and the government can still fight the war on terror. If we were to allow some office of the government to decide what journalists can say, that would be the same that the King of England imposed on newspapers in England and in the U.S. and that prompted the Revolution. It would be about the most un-American thing you can imagine. How can we fight a war to bring freedom to another country, to bring freedom of the press to another country when we’re crushing freedom of the press here at home?

KILMEADE: Not crushing — preserving our freedom by preserving our secrets because war is not a free thing. Intelligence is not something to be shared: It’s to be coveted and used to our advantage. Here’s what Roosevelt did. He appointed Byron Price, a respected journalist, to run the office. Price accepts the post on the condition that the media can voluntarily agree on a self-censorship. The Office employs 14,000, and they are civilians, to monitor cable, mail, and radio communications between the United States and other nations. The Office closes in 1945. Our nation still flies. The flag still soars.

NAPOLITANO: Scaring me to death, Brian, because I know they’d come after [Fox News host Bill] O’Reilly and me and you’d have to visit us in Gitmo.

KILMEADE: No, they wouldn’t. You’re not doing anything anti-American.

This guy quoted here is, as they say, so far of the mark that he’s not even wrong. Techdirt takes a cable exec to school. Fun ensues.

A senior Vatican official is advocating excommunication for researchers working with human stem cells.

Never forget this is the organization that jailed Galileo for being right.

The political right is deeply invested in insisting that global warming isn’t happening, or that if it’s happening it’s not our fault, and in either case we should do nothing about it. It’s an article of faith with them, in no small part because of the degree to which they’re beholden to Big Oil.

Ergo, it’s no surprise they’ve tried to come out with the long knives for Al Gore’s documentary. The first attacks were pretty funny: insisting it was a flop based on radically selective readings of box office receipts. Of course, now that it’s one of the most financially successful documentaries of all time, it’s awful hard to make that stick. Yes, “Cars” made more money. No, no one is surprised by that. No, this doesn’t make “An Inconvenient Truth” a flop.

Comes now boneheads like John Stossel, trotting out long-dismissed canards purporting to undercut the conclusions of the vast majority of climatologists. He doesn’t do well, as Media Matters can show, but at least he didn’t start with attacks on Gore himself, unlike most who oppose his film.

The “liberal” media has gotten all matter of things wrong on the financial tracking story. MediaMatters has a rundown of the top falsehoods.

We’ve not covered it, as it’s been all over the news, but here’s the summary: Warren Buffett is so rich he’s hired Bill Gates to spend his money for him. (Yes, it’s a Colbert line.) The Oracle of Omaha is donating the bulk of his US$44B wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which combats (among other things) disease and poverty in developing countries.

Way to go, right?

Well, it’s angered some Catholic nutjobs and other pro-lifers on account of the Gates Foundation giving money to Planned Parenthood. And by “money” we mean “less than 1 percent of their giving,” not that this matters; PP is an excellent organization that spends most of its time and money on education, well-women exams, the distribution of birth control, and the preservation of access thereto. It is not, as the anti-choicers like to say, “primarily an abortion provider.”

“The merger of Gates and Buffett may spell doom for the families of the developing world,” said the Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, a Roman Catholic priest who is president of Human Life International.

Referring to Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi death camp doctor, Euteneuer said Buffett “will be known as the Dr. Mengele of philanthropy unless he repents.”

We are certain Jesus is very, very proud. Seriously, where the hell do you get off claiming this is anything but a watershed moment in philanthropy? Buffett and Gates are the templates by which we ought to measure the wealthy: they realize their money can make serious changes in the lives of literally millions of people, and they’re acting accordingly. They have no room for dogma or bullshit, and they clearly entertain no wrongheaded notions about denying birth control or contraceptive education because some jackasses think sex is icky.

If your reaction to the most momentous charitable gift ever is to claim it spells doom for the recipients because they might get ahold of some rubbers, well, I’m not sure what the hell is wrong with you. It’s certainly proof that you care more about dogma than you do about people.

The first post-Armstrong Tour will also be missing several other huge names thanks to an enormous doping scandal, it was reported today. Armstrong’s friendly rival, 1997 winner and five time runner-up Jan Ullrich won’t be riding, nor will Ivan Basso. In all, more than fifty cyclists have been implicated in an Spanish doping scandal now several weeks old. Basso and Ullrich have been pulled by their teams (CSC and T-Mobile, respectively), as was Spaniard Franciso Mancebo, who came in 4th last year.

CNN is reporting that T-Mobile has in fact cut all ties with veteran Ullrich, and will require him to prove his innocence to ride for them again. If true, this is a terrible end to Ullrich’s career; in a non-Lance world, he would certainly have won the Tour more than once — as noted above, he was bested only by Lance in 5 of his trips to France.

Blessedly, Americans George Hincapie (Discovery Channel), Levi Leipheimer (Gerolsteiner) and Floyd Landis (Phonak) are thus far untouched. A field free of Ullrich and Basso makes American success more likely, of course, but by no means a certainty.

This crap oughta rile even the reactionary Heathen Attorney.

One: A New Hampshire man has been arrested for videotaping police on his property with the surveillance system he installed for security reasons. Said arrest came after he was sufficiently pissed off by the rude behavior of a cop investigating his son that he took the videotape down to HQ to use it as evidence in a complaint.

Two: You can be found guilty of DUI in Michigan now for having THC residue in your bloodstream from exposure days or weeks earlier even though no impairing effects could be (or can be) shown.

The bad news is that the Texas redistricting map has been largely upheld by the Supremes. Apparently, legislatures can redistrict any damn time they want within some fairly flexible guidelines. Expect redistricting, then, every time control shifts from one party to the other. This can’t be a good idea.

The good news is that those same Supremes also held that Bush does not have the right to try the Gitmo detainees with military tribunals, i.e. kangaroo courts. This, at least, is a pretty big rebuke from the Court on Bush’s assertions of virtually unlimited wartime power.

If they did, the “liberal” media wouldn’t be so happy about discussing charges of treason for the New York Times over the financial snooping program.

Seriously. What. The. Fuck? Treason? For reporting the truth? About a possibly illegal secret program? Bush’s ongoing hostility to the press is well documented, but this is completely beyond the pale. Claiming investigative reporters are “helping the enemy” when they report on possibly extralegal surveillance programs is complete and utter bullshit, and only serves to illustrate how far down the river we’ve been sold.

Majikthise’s got more.

Aaron Spelling has been cancelled by the great ratings body in the sky. He was 83.

IMDB lists 212 producer credits for Spelling, including The Mod Squad, The Rookies, Starsky and Hutch, Charlie’s Angels, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, Vega$, Dynasty, T. J. Hooker, Hart to Hart, and Beverly Hills 90210.

Librarian insists police provide subpoena for requested data, as per law. Said librarian may be reprimanded for it, on the grounds that she “put the interests of the library first.” Um, isn’t that her job?

The AT&T v EFF suit over almost-certainly-illegal call record turnover is heating up. The fun part of this is that the government and AT&T are basically saying “there’s a war on, and to even address these allegations or review the evidence is to disclose too much,” which more or less means “secrecy is more important than the rule of law.”

Um, no. We can think of several regimes where that was (or is) the case, but we’re pretty sure we don’t want it as a value in our republic. More at Wired here; the 27BStroke6 blog is covering this pretty well.

Update: Fortunately, it looks like the judge is paying attention, at least based on the questions he’s insisting all sides answer.

In a pretty disappointing move, former White House staffer Mike McCurry is now shilling against Net Neutrality for the big telcos. Trouble is, there’s no real argument against the concept, as this dialog shows.

The biggest joke from the telco argument is the idea that Google or Amazon or whomever is looking for a “free ride” of some kind; it doesn’t even make sense. Obviously those firms pay millions to telcos every year for bandwidth. We here at Heathen pay for our end, too. There is no free ride, as Amazon’s Paul Misener makes clear in the link above.

Go check it out. As they whine about not needing network neutrality, it’s important to remember how brazen and arrogant they’ve been in the past, and how much they’ve just plain lied. Keep in mind, too, how much they totally rolled over for the Feds on this domestic wiretapping thing (except, of course, for Qwest).

Update: As if on cue, we get this announcement from AT&T, who now assert they own all your customer data, even the stuff that they probably ought not be collecting. Evil, we tell you. Evil.

Telcos are lying bastards.

JWZ reports that a restaurant in China is serving food made with human milk, which makes him and us wonder: Is it Vegan?

(Also, this makes us wonder if somewhere there aren’t people who work in a vegan dairy, which just makes us laugh.)

Google is introducing Google Spreadsheets.

Mike asks: why? His view is that most spreadsheet users will be unwilling to put spreadsheet data onto a server they don’t control out on the Internet. I think there certainly are some of these people, but I don’t think this is a major problem for Google for several reasons.

First, most people don’t care about the implications of Internet storage. The runaway success of web-based email tools (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) makes this very clear. I don’t know about you, but I routinely receive sensitive information in my email, or certainly information that could be used to access sensitive information. It’s clear people will trade this security hit — if they even realize it exists — for convenience.

Second, I assert without supporting data that most spreadsheets aren’t in any way sensitive. No one would have gained anything by hacking Google Spreadsheets and viewing our wedding plan last year, for example. Most spreadsheets, even the ones with financial data, are wholly mundane and of use or value only to those who create and reference them. Even in a world of perfectly sophisticated security-minded consumers, this leaves an enormous volume of spreadsheet applications that are perfect for Google.

Third, the killer app here is sharing. The tools that people like 37 Signals are creating aren’t better than standalone desktop apps at what they do, but they’re good enough that people use them because doing so makes sharing the information trivial. “Collaborative spreadsheeting” in an office or between offices is an activity fraught with peril; the usual result is several competing versions all sitting in everyone’s email attachment folder. I know Mrs. Heathen and I fought this issue with our wedding data, and I know a certain theater company that would love to be able to share a single sheet without constantly locking people out. Google can address this as a baseline quality of Spreadsheets, and in doing so create a value that Microsoft cannot emulate at all.

Now, obviously Google can’t possibly be aiming to eliminate Excel. It really is a good program; it’s perhaps the best thing to ever come out of Microsoft. However, it’s become almost required, since there are vanishingly few alternatives that are visible to normal people (OpenOffice doesn’t count), and it’s expensive. Casual spreadsheet use probably generates more sales than real number crunching, and that’s the market Google will target here. If you don’t have to buy Office after all — alternatives to Word are legion, and only the marketing droids need PowerPoint — how much money per seat do you save?

Slashdot reports that Windows XP secretly phones home. Regularly. WTF?

The Pentagon is removing the section on Geneva Convention compliance from its field manuals.

Or, at least, charge you money for making copies of CDs to put on your iPod. No, we’re not kidding:

Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer’s memory or buffered over a network would need yet another license. Once again, Big Copyright is looking for a way to double-dip into your wallet, extracting payment for the same content at multiple levels. Today, so-called “incidental” copies don’t need to be licensed; they’re made in the process of doing *other* things, like listening to your MP3 library or plugging into a Net radio station. If you paid for the MP3 and the radio station is up-to-date with its bookkeeping, nobody should have to pay again, right? Not if SIRA becomes law. Out of the blue, copyright holders would have created an entire new market to charge for — and sue over. Good for them. Bad for us.

OMIC notes that the Boston Globe is the only group still covering the signing statement issue; in this installment:

WASHINGTON — The board of governors of the American Bar Association voted unanimously yesterday to investigate whether President Bush has exceeded his constitutional authority in reserving the right to ignore more than 750 laws that have been enacted since he took office. Meeting in New Orleans, the board of governors for the world’s largest association of legal professionals approved the creation of an all-star legal panel with a number of members from both political parties. They include a former federal appeals court chief judge, a former FBI director, and several prominent scholars — to evaluate Bush’s assertions that he has the power to ignore laws that conflict with his interpretation of the Constitution. Bush has appended statements to new laws when he signs them, noting which provisions he believes interfere with his powers. Among the laws Bush has challenged are the ban on torturing detainees, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot Act, and “whistle-blower” protections for federal employees. The challenges also have included safeguards against political interference in taxpayer-funded research. Bush has challenged more laws than all previous presidents combined.

Bush urges gay marriage ban enshrined in Constitution. From the CNN story:

“Sadly, President Bush is playing election-year politics with this divisive issue,” the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Friday. “He is shamelessly using this ploy to energize his right-wing base. We should never rewrite the Constitution to enshrine intolerance.”

Olbermann rips O’Reilly a new one, again. The video is a few minutes long, but watch it. Bill has been citing the Malmedy massacre in World War II as evidence that US troops have always committed war crimes, which, apparently at least in HIS head, means that it’s ok, and that we need not worry about Haditha. Fox’s blowhard prince gets his facts completely wrong TWICE. There was a massacre at Malmedy, and unarmed POWs were shot dead by their captors; that much he gets right. The prisoners were, however, Americans, and it was them who ended up the victims at Malmedy. Not that this troubles Bill at all, natch.

But thank God for Olbermann.

They’ve slashed antiterror funding for Washington and New York. Clever.

In addition to Washington and New York, the grant decisions included a 46 percent drop for San Diego, where several of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived; a 61 percent decrease for Phoenix, where an FBI agent suspected that terrorists were taking flight training; and a 30 percent reduction for Boston, the point of origin of the two jetliners that crashed into the World Trade Center. Phoenix Mayor Phillip Gordon called the grant reduction from $10 million to $3.9 million “outrageous.” He said that Phoenix, the nation’s fifth-largest city, includes a network of dams, a nuclear power plant and numerous other potential targets. “Shame on them,” Gordon said. “They are literally stripping the ability to protect this area by actions that are incomprehensible.” Winners included Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as smaller cities such as Louisville (up 70 percent), Charlotte (64 percent) and St. Louis (31 percent).

It’s getting harder and harder to be surprised by how completely stupid this Administration is.

Microsoft is launching a paid subscription service designed to make Windows more secure.

Wow. Sell a crappy, broken product, and then charge people to sort of fix it. Absolutely astounding.

Slashdot reports that Washington state has made online gambling a class C felony, or “just as bad” under the law as, say, possessing child porn. Those convicted under the law could face $10K in fines and up to 5 years in the pokey. For playing poker on teh Intarwub.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote. In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs. Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. Supporters said that it will protect governments from lawsuits filed by disgruntled workers pretending to be legitimate whistleblowers. The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court’s shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and the arrival of Alito.

More here.

Abu Gonzales wants to prosecute journalists who print leaked classified information. While we’re sure this is a popular idea among those who’d rather we didn’t know about secret prisons, Abu Graib, torture, extraordinary rendition, extralegal wiretapping, and the NSA sniffing through all our phone records, well, we’re pretty sure the Founders enshrined a free press first for a good reason — specifically, so that the press can serve as a check on governmental power. Think Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, etc., too, if the more recent examples aren’t good enough for you.

It other words, shut the fuck up, Alberto.

Subject: Paul McCartney and Heather Mills are separating. We seed the horrid joke well with these few from, well, The Well.

1. “The divorce should be a snap for Paul — she doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
2. “We understand Heather has no idea why, either — she’s totally stumped.”
3. “Apparently, it’s just to hard to follow in Linda’s footsteps.”
4. “At least we know she didn’t kick him out of the house.”
5. “Sources say she’ll insist on a hefty settlement, as she has no visible means of support.”

Additional entries entertained in the c-c-c-comments.

Doug Flutie is retiring. He started with the famed Hail Mary in 1984, and goes out on the first drop-kick in the NFL since ’41 or ’48, depending on how you count. Cool.